Bloodlust
by Lady Sashi
Summary: Stefan finds satisfaction and solace in a new diet with help from Damon. I own nothing. M to be safe.


A/N: I don't normally write for this genre, and have only recently started watching The Vampire Diaries. Nor have I read the books; but this story, which is based on a dream I had is just begging to be told. I don't typically ask openly and outright for reviews, as I believe it is something that should be earned as a writer; wether it be good or bad. That being said, I apologize in advance if the characters or story is OOC.

Stefan was having difficulty controlling his cravings; had always had difficulty controlling his cravings, and Damon just seemed to be making things worse - didn't he always?  
The smart-aleck remarks about his chosen diet and constant 'Twilight' references were bad enough, but to top it off, he constantly tempted the younger brother with his 'matured' taste, and Stefan was getting more and more on edge.  
The aggression however, was rooted to the core of the problem. The problem being he was hungry.  
All the time.  
And he didn't mean just plain old 'hungry' hungry, he meant 'borderline starving, if I don't get something to eat soon, I'm gonna rip out someone's throat and feast on their insides' hungry.  
And no matter what he did, or what he tried, he couldn't get enough.  
He'd tried all varieties of his 'vegetarian' - to borrow a phrase from that blasphemous, false fantasy ideal of a book- diet, but that all tasted like ash and did nothing to quell the hunger, or the burning fire.  
He even snuck a taste at Damon's food supply, but that tasted even worse, and helped even less.  
At this rate he was afraid he'd starve.

-

Stefan was writing in his journal, trying to distract himself from the constant gnawing hunger and find some inner peace; what little there was of it for a vampire, when Damon walked in.  
The younger grit his teeth in annoyance, the agitation and aggression he had been feeling for the past while grew stronger the longer he went without relief.  
He mentally tried to prepare himself for the daily psychological battle that would ensue.  
'Good morning brother, and how are you on this wondrous day of our bleak and eternal existence'?  
'If you're worried about it being so eternal, I can gleefully remedy that for you', Stefan suggested.  
'Ohh, feisty'! Damon quipped as he swung himself over the back of couch. 'Must have been a slow hunt, Bambi getting too smart for you? Or maybe you just need something that's a bit more challenging'.  
'Shut up Damon, I'm not in the mood', Stefan could feel the precious little that remained of his patience draining away like the blood from a corpse as he sipped away its life.  
Hell's teeth, he was hungry!  
'Little bro doesn't wanna play with his big brother, what a shocker', Damon chuckled.  
By this time Stefan had had enough, actually he'd had enough the moment Damon had walked through the door, but he was trying to reign it in.  
Stefan calmly closed his journal, stood up, placed his hand on Damon's shoulder  
And drove his pencil into his brother's gut.  
Damon gasped and wheezed as Stefan removed the implement before retreating to his quarters.  
Stefan slammed the door shut, cracking the frame. He tossed the bloodied pencil on the table and slumped down on the floor in the corner.  
Trying to quell the rage inside him, he rubbed his hands down his face, smearing Damon's blood along it in the process.  
Reflexively, he licked his lips.  
The blood connecting with his tongue tasted euphoric. He felt immediately calmer and the hunger seemed to subside ever so slightly.  
Without thinking, Stefan licked up the rest of the blood from his hands and face and removed all traces of it from the pencil, crushing it to pulp and sucking at every last drop he could reach.  
This is what he was carving.  
This is what he needed.  
Vampire blood.  
This was unheard of.  
Stefan was alarmed by his new found choice in diet. It had to have been a mistake.  
He was so hungry and it was the only thing immediately available that his body and brain tricked him into believing this absurd lie.  
Soon enough though, he would get his chance to find out.

-

Damon came barging into living room- kind of a redundant name in every sense of the word, but particularly in the case of vampires. I mean have you ever known anyone to actually live in one?  
The older brother had had a run-in with the tomb vampires and had war wounds to show for it. He gripped his right arm tightly as he quickly shed his jacket and used an old rag to bandage the deep scratch that was pouring blood.  
Pouring blood.  
Stefan's still heart beat faster. The floor was covered in it, he quickly found an old wash basin and began soaking the blood up with a rag.  
Damon raised an eyebrow in question.  
'It'll soak into the floorboards', Stefan argued in his defense.  
'Sure thing Mr Clean', Damon muttered as he downed bourbon straight from the carafe.  
When the floors were spotless, Stefan quickly reached up to his brother's wound. 'Let me see that', Stefan babbled, squeezing the bandage hard.  
'Easy Florence, that hurts! Nothing a little snack won't fix; want one'?  
I'll pass, thanks', just the mere mention made Stefan's stomach churn.  
'Suit yourself', Damon stated as he wandered off to his private stash.  
I think I just may have something better.  
Stefan consumed the blood on his hands, and downed the basin like a man gone too long in the desert.  
It wasn't till it was drained of every drop until Stefan realized he had a dilemma.  
He was still hungry.

-

The younger Salvatore brother had a complication to deal with. Not the fact that he was now on a diet consisting solely of vampire blood, he'd come to terms with that, and he liked those terms very much.  
As it turned out the blood was better than human blood. He was faster, stronger and more powerful than Damon, although he let his older sibling believe otherwise.  
He was willing to bet he would soon be as strong as Pearl and the other tomb vampires.  
The obstacle he had to face was the fact that his supply was running low.  
How long could he continue to syphon blood from his own brother before the elder began to notice. He had already had to result to compulsion.  
Part of Stefan liked that. The fact that he could have so much power over the brother who had always lorded that same power over his own head.  
The ability to steal that very same power from him.  
Sip by literal sip.  
And then the power to make him forget.

-

This had been going on for months, the slow nightly shadow-dance the two played, but only one ever remembered, but his hunger was ever-growing and he found himself having to force himself to stop feeding from Damon before things got dangerous.  
And each time was worse than the last.  
The solution to the problem however had been staring him in the face the entire time.  
The tomb vampires.  
Not only would he be getting his feed with no restraint, on needing to stop until he was full, but he would be doing everyone a service in the process.  
And he could blame it all on the council, who would give the credit to Damon, who of course would accept it.  
Problem solved.

-

Finding the house where the vampires were staying was easy enough, the problem would be killing just those he needed. No point in being greedy.  
If he killed them all, it'd be a waste and he'd exhaust his whole supply, not to mention that would draw too much attention and prove problematic.  
One should be enough.

-

One is never enough.  
One turned into two and two into four, and the numbers just kept climbing.  
It was easy with his stronger abilities, which proved to be all the more stronger, feeding on older vampires.  
He drained his first one dry, caught it as it left the house late one night.  
As predicted events folded out as planned, the council found the odd one and attributed it's demise to Damon, and he was too smart to deny it, and too stupid to figure out the real culprit.  
The rest of his kills he burned or buried; somewhere remote, somewhere out of state. Always in a place that had a streak of similar deaths that they could be tied to, and never in the same place twice.  
Soon Stefan found himself taking on larger and larger numbers at a time. He'd store the blood in numerous caches; he was smarter than to leave it all in one place.  
After a while though being selective wasn't enough, his options had run too low, and he found himself feeding on those he had learned to trust and admire.  
It gave him a great sense of power and satisfaction that he could manipulate a tomb vampire into permitting a feed as easily as he could his own brother.  
Every once in a while he found he'd lose control and end up killing a particular morsel he'd been feeding on for some time.  
This became more frequent than he would have linked to admit.  
Soon after that he was left with an even bigger issue.  
There were no vampires left.  
And he was still hungry.  
It was then that he began the unthinkable.  
Growing his own food so to speak.  
He would find a run-away, someone nobody would miss, and he would turn them to serve as his personal food supply.  
Stefan soon had dozens, mostly out of state, which were compelled to never tell a soul who turned them.  
Most didn't even know they were vampires.  
All they knew was they couldn't go out in the sun.

-

The pattern went on for years and no one ever caught on.  
He was too smart for that.  
He was too strong for that.  
And in the end, the bloodlust always won.


End file.
